One conclusion drawn by Professor Asen Asenov, CEO of GSS (Glasgow, Scotland), is that Intel may need to turn to silicon-on-insulator wafers to scale its FinFETs below 22-nm. This may also have implications for foundries which are yet to introduce FinFET technology into their chip manufacturing processes.

GSS has already done some TCAD simulation of FinFETs and posted findings in a blog that discussed the fact that at 22-nm Intel's FinFETs are trapezoidal rather than rectangular in cross-section (see Intel's FinFETs are less fin and more triangle).

The latest GSS blog seeks to compare the on-current of differently-shaped FinFETs. It points out that in logic applications multiple fins are connected in parallel, resulting in an averaging of their characteristics, but in SRAM circuits the variability of a single fin is a key characteristic and performance limiter.

The characteristic dimensions of three FinFETs were fed into the GSS Garand simulator and it revealed that at 22-nm, nature appears to have worked to Intel's advantage. "Despite significant differences in the shape of the three fins, the difference in the on-current is within a 4 percent range," the blog states.

"Compared with process variation across the chip or across the wafer 4 percent is small. But it is additional variation," Professor Asenov told EE Times. He added that the simulation revealed that the FinFET process technology is complex and difficult to implement, partly because of the lack of a planarization process that can level-up shallow trench isolation oxides between transistors. One result of this is that bulk FinFET heights can vary, he said.

Professor Asenov admitted that a number of assumptions have to be made to allow the simulations to run. It is assumed that the fin itself is virtually undoped but there is a punch-through stopper dopant region beneath the fin. "We don't know about dopant profiles and